Our earlier work in the field of methods and apparatuses for retarding or eliminating the progression of myopia (short-sightedness) in an individual by controlling off-axis (peripheral) aberrations concerned manipulating the curvature of field of a visual image while simultaneously providing clear central imaging. This earlier work was the subject of and commonly assigned U.S. Ser. No. 11/349,295, filed Feb. 7, 2006, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,503,655 which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. Ser. No. 10/887,753, filed Jul. 9, 2004, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,025,460. The entire contents of these documents are herein incorporated by reference as if made a part of the present specification.
These earlier works related to methods of abating, retarding or eliminating the progression of refractive errors (i.e. myopia or hyperopia) in an individual by controlling off-axis aberrations, through manipulating the curvature of field of a visual image in a predetermined fashion and ultimately altering, reducing or eliminating eye axial elongation. It had been discovered that the peripheral retinal image (i.e. peripheral vision) plays a major role in determining eye growth, and is an effective stimulus that controls axial elongation that leads to myopia.
Therefore, these cited, earlier works concerned methods by which myopia progression may be retarded (and in many cases, halted or reversed) with the use of a novel optical device having a predetermined off-axis aberration-controlled design that abates, retards or eliminates eye growth.
More specifically it was determined that the progression of myopia could be modified by precise, predetermined control of the off-axis optical corrective factors, or aberrations of the corrective device, or the combined off-axis optical aberrations of the eye and corrective device, such that the visual image has a peripheral field image location that is positioned more anteriorly to (or in front of) the peripheral retina (i.e. towards the cornea or the front of the eye) than normally in the uncorrected condition or with traditional correction devices or strategies, while the central field image location is positioned near the central retina (i.e. the fovea). This arrangement minimizes or eliminates the stimulus for eye axial elongation that leads to myopia. And since the device does not introduce any central field defocusing (as are, for example, introduced by under-correction methods, or bifocal or progressive optical devices) the devices of the invention of the cited earlier works provide the wearer with good visual acuity. Thus, those earlier efforts have been directed to peripheral field manipulation for the specific purposes of alleviating myopia progression.
It has now been discovered that, by precisely locating or directing peripheral images substantially on the periphery of the retina, one can achieve highly and selectively enhanced peripheral vision while substantially simultaneously achieving corrected, clear central vision. This “wide-angle” approach to vision correction, can lead to greatly enhanced vision, or “global vision” (i.e. improved or enhanced vision across the “globus oculi”—the eye-ball—or large expanses of the total field of vision including both central and peripheral) that would benefit not only individuals who are conventionally considered to be “ametropes” (individuals with central refractive errors; who are conventionally deemed to require refractive vision correction), but all individuals—including individuals who are conventionally considered to be “emmetropes” (individuals without central refractive errors) but who may be ametropic in their peripheral vision. This new approach to vision correction would be especially useful to people with highly selective or specialized vision needs in the peripheral field.